New Cost Effective Treatment for Criminally Insane

Everyone’s heard of Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) for severe mental health disorders. Now there’s a new experimental treatment for the criminally insane that is being trialed at Springfield Hospital in Tooting. It’s called GHT- Getting Hit by a Train.

Long term patient Paul Caesar, aged 37 was administered GHT and it has proved to be a very cost effective method of treatment. Reports detail that the treatment took 2 hours to prepare and that clinical effectiveness once treatment was given was immediate and noticeable.

The treatment costs very little as it utilizes existing rail infrastructure and no changes to timetabling are required. Clean up costs and forensic examination payments are reported to be minimal. I would estimate it to be about £6,000.

Figures from Scotland suggest that the cost of keeping a patient in a secure mental hospital is around £140,000 per year. Paul Caesar was admitted to Springfield in 1997 and therefore the cost of NHS treatment so far had been £1.4m.

Assuming average life expectancy of 76 years for a UK male, Mr Caesar would have had another 39 years of treatment in the secure hospital costing a total of  £5.4m in today’s money.

I hear that GHT will be included in the next set of NICE guidelines.